


mes souvenirs sont tachés de jaune

by LtTanyaBoone



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtTanyaBoone/pseuds/LtTanyaBoone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>future fic in which Delphine paints Kira's nails</p>
            </blockquote>





	mes souvenirs sont tachés de jaune

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully, the title is French for "My memories are stained with yellow". If it's not correct, feel free to tell me the right expression for it. Google translate, dict.cc and bab.la can only get a writer so far.

**Disclaimers:** Orphan Black, the rights to the show and its characters do not belong to me. No money was made by this. The title of this was inspired by a line from the song "La petite mort" by Coeur de Pirate.  
**Spoilers:** S01E10, future fic  
**Pairing:** Cosima Niehaus/Delphine Cormier

**Warning:**  major character death

* * *

It’s the third time Sarah allows her to be around Kira, and the very first time that Delphine is alone with the little girl. And if it weren't for the fact that Alison has an emergency that apparently needs both Felix and Sarah to come and help her, Delphine is pretty sure Sarah would have never let her babysit her daughter.

The past few weeks have put them all through the wringer, but the resilience of children is something the French woman had always been fascinated with, and now watching the little girl draw by herself, no sign of fear or tension at all in her body, Delphine almost wishes she were seven again, too. Wishes for the comfort that came with having an adult watch over her and make decisions for her. The comfort of being safe, really.

Then again, Kira isn’t like other children. She already knows that the monsters from the fairytales are pretty cute when compared to the monsters that lurk among the strangers on the street.

“Miss Cormier?” the girl pipes up and Delphine jumps on the couch, having gotten lost in her thoughts. Sarah never once called her by her first name, and while her mother sometimes throws a rather nasty “Doctor Cormier” her way, Kira seems to prefer Auntie Alison’s way of addressing Delphine.

“Yes?” she finally says, furrowing her brows a little when she sees that Kira has gotten hold of one of her bottles of nail polish. She’d blame Felix for leaving his stuff scattered around the apartment, but the dark red is definitely hers. Though she hasn’t worn the color in over two weeks, after she couldn’t find it after one of Alison’s cleaning sprees.

“Why do people paint their nails?” Kira asks, dropping the bottle into Delphine’s open hand.

“I don’t know.” she shrugs, shaking the bottle a little and making the metallic balls click. “I guess to, look pretty.” she offers weakly, looking down at her bare nails. She took her polish off a few days ago before visiting Cosima at the hospital and hasn’t been in any mood to re-paint them since then.

“My mum doesn’t paint hers.” Kira points out and scoots up on the couch to sit next to Delphine. “Do you feel pretty when you paint yours?” she asks her and Delphine sighs, shaking her head.

“Well, yes, but… it’s not like that.” she mutters, getting up to put the bottle away in her suitcase. When she turns back around, Kira is standing at the couch table, looking almost shy and giving her a puppy look that Delphine knows well enough from other children.

“What?” she asks her, unable to help the smile tugging at her lips.

“Can you paint my nails?” the little girl asks, jumping up and down uncharacteristically. “Please, Delphine.”

It takes her by surprise, the way her name sounds when Kira says it. She didn’t even think that the girl knew her first name, after all she can’t remember anyone besides Felix and Cosima regularly using it.

“I don’t think your mum would like it very much if I did.” she tries to turn her down. Kira frowns at her before shrugging.

“Mrs S promised me she’d let me do them orange for Halloween.” she informs her. “It’ll be like practice. Please?”

She already has her mouth open to tell her no again, and that it’ll be the last word on the matter, but then Delphine makes the horrible mistake of looking into Kira’s eyes and immediately knows she’s lost that battle.

“Okay, fine.” she sighs, shaking her head at herself as she digs out her beauty case and goes over the selection of colors she brought with her. Most are dark shades, a dark red, brown and even black. Definitely not colors to put on the hands of a little girl, especially not one with such a bright personality like Kira. There’s clear nail polish, too, but it would defeat the purpose and while it might get Sarah off her back, Delphine knows that Kira will have none of that. So she selects a light blue, a bright pink and a yellow she has no idea where she even got that one from and also takes the bottle of nail polish remover and the nail file before returning to the couch and setting down the bottles, watching as Kira eyes them excitedly.

“Let’s wash your hands first.” Delphine declares and Kira grabs her hand and lets her pull her to the bathroom area, where Delphine has to lift her up a little so she is able to reach the water in the sink. Once Kira’s hands are clean, they return to the couch, and much to Delphine’s surprise, Kira picks the yellow, holding it out to her. The French woman grabs the old newspaper and puts it on one of the pillows before she tells Kira to rest her hand on it.

“You know,” she finds herself talking as she attempts to paint the first of the girl’s nails, “I used to do this whenever I had too many thoughts running around in my head.” she tells her, frowning at her work before picking Kira’s hand up. Maybe it will be easier this way. She’s never had to work on hands this small, Delphine thinks as she wills her hand to stop shaking so much. Sarah will kill her for this, anyway, and leaving smudges all over Kira’s hands will not make the situation any better.

“Why?” the girl asks, shifting so she can see Delphine work.

“It takes time, and you really have to concentrate.” Delphine answers, blowing a curl of hair from her face before Kira reaches out and Delphine feels her brush it back. She smiles at the girl and Kira grins back at her, showing her teeth and again, that little voice in Delphine’s head that never quite shuts up whenever there is any mention of Kira reminds her that she could be Cosima’s daughter. That the girl’s mother is a genetic identical of the woman Delphine fell in love with, and it makes her heart jump into her throat. How different things could have been, if Helena had not killed Danielle Fournier, the woman Delphine had originally studied. Until one day, when she came to work at the Dyad Institute only to find her desk empty, all her files gone, and in their place just blood samples with a different barcode. She had been so angry then that she’d stormed right into Professor Leekie’s office, prepared to fight for her place on the human clone project when she thought she’d been removed after the rather heated argument the day before. Only to learn that the subject she’d been studying, the woman whose immune system she’d been studying had died unexpectedly, and she’d been reassigned. It had taken her all of three hours to remember the new subject’s code, 324b21, written on reports and files and samples and charts so many times that Delphine was sure she must have been whispering it in her sleep.

“Like drawing.” Kira’s voice breaks through her thoughts and Delphine lets go of the girl’s left hand.

“Well, it is a kind of drawing. Painting. Just with a really tiny brush.” she allows. “Just let it rest on the pillow for a bit, don’t make a fist or touch the color.” she instructs her as she sets to work on the right hand, slowly getting the hang of painting such small nails. “I’m not an artist, I can’t really draw. So when I was a teenager, I started doing my nails instead, to distract me.”

“Okay, now we sit and wait for it to dry.” Delphine declares after finishing Kira’s pinky, screwing the top back on the bottle once she is done.

“Aren’t you gonna do yours?” the girls asks, causing the French woman to open her mouth to tell her no. She hasn’t been in the mood to do much, this morning she hadn’t even put on lipstick. Too much going on inside her head for that, and always the little question why she should even bother with it. Everything has changed and it feels like such little things have lost their meaning weeks ago, really.

“Actually…” Delphine trails off, tilting her head a little before she looks down at the bottle of nail polish she is still clutching in her hand, giving it an experimental shake, a soft smile starting to play on her lips.

It’s strange, Delphine thinks as she finishes putting the color on her left hand, how intelligent of a conversation one can have with a child. Because she has been talking to Kira, really talking. Granted, it was mostly about school, but a little about music, too. For someone so young, the girl really has some strong opinions, no doubt the product of a pig-headed mother and her uncle Felix.

When she looks up after finally being done with her right hand, too, she finds Kira staring at her brightly colored nails, moving her fingers with fascination.

“Auntie Cosima really liked you.” Kira suddenly pipes up, looking right at Delphine, who feels her breath catch in her throat.

“She tell you that?” Delphine asks, hating how her voice shakes with emotion. It’s been so long, it feels like a lifetime since Kira got abducted and Cosima told her she was sick, since she returned to the Dyad Institute to fool them into believing she was still on the scientist side of this mess and to begin the race against the clock again in order to save a clone. Only by then, Cosima was far more than just a clone, she was more than a six-letter code on some vials. When Delphine closes her eyes and concentrates really hard, she can still feel Cosima’s lips on hers, from their first kiss. Not the time Cosima kissed her and Delphine was so shocked she practically ran from Cosima’s apartment, but from the kiss that Delphine initiated, that led to them having sex for the first time. The first time Delphine had ever slept with another woman, the first time she had ever wanted to. Not because she wanted to get information, not because she wanted to make sure Cosima was safe, but because that moment their tongues met, Delphine felt every fiber in her body come alive in a way she had never experienced before.

But now Helena is dead and so is Leekie, Paul is still in prison after being charged with his murder, Sarah will have to face a trail following her escapades as Beth, Dyad is in shambles and so is Delphine’s entire life.

“Hm.” Kira nods. “She said that she was sorry, about having to leave. Only mum said you didn’t need to hear that, because you were sad enough already.”

Delphine closes her eyes and presses a hand over her mouth in an attempt to keep herself from breaking down in front of the girl. She feels Kira shift on the couch and then small arms wrap around her neck and she can’t help the sob that escapes her when she reaches up to hug Kira back.

“Merci.” she breathes softly, letting out a sniffle. “Thank you.” Delphine adds after a moment, suddenly remembering that Kira wouldn’t know what she meant with just the French word. She wants to say something else, but before she can find the words for it, the door to the apartment opens, and Sarah and Felix walk in. Kira jumps off the couch and races to her mother, Sarah bending down to pick her up and hug her daughter.

“I missed you, monkey.” Delphine hears her mutter as she rises, turning her back and faking sudden concern for the order of pillows on the couch in hopes of wiping the tears of her face without the siblings seeing.

“Did she behave?”

Delphine lets out a soft laugh at that. Such a typical thing to ask, for a parent, only she’d never have expected Sarah Manning of all people to be worried about the way her daughter behaved.

“Oui. Yes. She was a real angel.” Delphine nods, smiling at the girl.

“What’s that?” Felix asks, grabbing Kira’s hand off Sarah’s shoulder as the nail polish catches his eye. His eyes widen and he stares at Delphine, who bites her lip, waiting for the outburst as Sarah inspects her daughter’s fingers.

“Is that nail polish?” she asks, looking at her daughter and then Delphine in confusion.

“We match!” Kira declares before Delphine can say anything and then the French woman just wants for the ground to open and swallow her whole. She sees Sarah’s eyes dart to her hands and self-consciously puts them into the pockets of her pants.

“She found a bottle I must have dropped on my first stay here and asked if I could paint her nails… She’s old enough to not put her hands into her mouth any more, isn’t she?” she suddenly wonders, trying to remember when exactly children got over that phase.

“’Course she is.” Felix rolls his eyes. “And you, monkey, look fabulous. Come on, show me.” he plucks Kira from her mother’s arms and carries her off to the area of his bed, throwing a pointed look over his shoulder at his sister. Sarah blinks, dumbfounded before she draws a slow breath.

“I’m sorry.” Delphine apologizes, because that’s all she has been doing around Sarah and at this point, it’s almost become a reflex.

“Huh? Oh, no, you don’t need to be.” Sarah waves her off. “When I was her age, I drew on mine with permanent marker. At least it’s not black.” she chuckles. “Actually, the yellow looks kinda pretty.”

Delphine nods, looking down at her own nails.

“Kinda reminds me of Cos.” Sarah adds, her voice soft. There’s an awkward silence between them before Delphine grabs the stuff from the table and puts it back into her suitcase. She really needs to decide what to do now, she thinks. The first day or two it was understandable that she didn’t want to leave, couldn’t make any decision really, but now it’s been a week and it’s getting ridiculous. She needs to move on, go back to France or stay and find a job here, but she needs to get out of this apartment and away from Sarah and Alison and their kids. It’s not healthy, staying around the genetic identicals of the woman you loved, it’s not helping her any to cling to them, as if that could, by some miracle, bring Cosima back. Because it can’t and it won’t, and Delphine knows she isn’t fooling anyone, least of all herself. She just has to look at Sarah to know she’s not Cosima, and even if it weren’t for the bloody accent or the hair, she’d know. Because neither Sarah nor Alison have ever looked at her the way Cosima has.

“Thank you.” Sarah’s voice yanks her back from her thoughts and Delphine’s jaw drops in complete shock. “For watching Kira. And… not just that. You risked a lot, going back to Dyad, and we’ve never, I never thanked you for that. If it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Kira back, and I, I owe you for that. Big time.”

“She’s a special girl.” Delphine mutters and as always, Sarah’s eyes narrow slightly. They always do when Delphine says something and she cannot be sure that it’s not the scientist speaking, whenever Sarah has the slightest reason to think that Delphine is talking about the whole human cloning thing.

“It’s so fucking unfair.” Sarah suddenly says and there are tears in her eyes, which she stubbornly wipes away. “Like I know enough to help with bloody science projects. But Cosima would have, she’d have helped Kira rock every damn science fair. But now she can’t do that, and Kira, she’ll hardly remember her. And it’s so fucking unfair. Like, why Cosima? Why’d she have to die, Delphine?”

The French woman gives a soft sniffle as she shakes her head.

“I don’t know.” she shrugs helplessly. It’s a question she’s asked herself many times. And others, too. How long Cosima ignored the signs for, when she first realized that it probably wasn’t just a persistent cold, if she was afraid… Delphine would like to think she wasn’t, afraif that is. But she can’t be sure, because the lack of oxygen tired her out so much and by the end, Cosima was sleeping more than anything, and Delphine’s visits were mostly her holding the other woman’s hand and watching her sleep, registering every rattled breath, every pause in her breathing, every time her chest didn’t rise fast enough or not as far as before.

“Did you…” she starts, hesitating. Her hand goes up to run through her hair, pull at the curls a little to snap her back from her thoughts. “Her ashes. I was hoping, maybe, if you could tell me where you, scattered them. I think I’d like to go there. Say goodbye.”

Because she had refused to do it beforehand, gradually, in the days when Cosima really started to deteriorate. And when it was over, she’d been in shock, because the constant beep from the heart monitor told her that Cosima was gone but her brain had refused to believe it, that it could be over like that, just one second to the next, and she hadn’t been able to let go.

“Uh, sure.” Sarah nods, hesitating, her eyes darting over Delphine’s shoulder to watch her brother and daughter briefly before she focuses on Delphine again. “I could take you right now.” she offers and Delphine nods, grabbing her jacket quickly and going ahead, until she is halfway down the stairs and there’s no way for her to go back to the apartment without it being embarrassing as hell.

* * *

“Siobhan used to take us here, when we were kids. We spent afternoons watching the birds, naming them…” Sarah tells her as Delphine and her stand at the shore, their eyes glued to the surface of the water of Lake Ontario. “Alison and I thought she would have liked it here. It’s beautiful in the spring, and the summer, too.”

Delphine can only nod wordlessly, because the tears are rising in her eyes again and she wouldn’t get a single word out without starting to sob. And if there is one thing she doesn’t want, it’s for Sarah Manning to see her breaking down. It’s bad enough Alison caught her crying the other day, she doesn’t need another half-hearted attempt of comfort from someone who still hates her and the role she played in all of this.

With a slow breath, Delphine squares her shoulders and takes another step closer to the water, throwing the white and red roses she bought on the way onto the surface. She knew Sarah almost expected her to come out of the flower shop with a huge bouquet, but this seemed more appropriate.

“I miss her.” she suddenly confesses when she returns to Sarah’s side. She can feel the eyes of the other woman on her and bows her head in an attempt to stop herself from crying, but then the first tear spills from her eyes and the next and before she knows it, Delphine is crying and trying to stifle her sobs by pressing her hand over her mouth.

She feels her pull on the sleeve of her jacket and the Sarah wraps his arms around her in a hug and Delphine starts crying even harder, because her body fits hers just as perfectly as Cosima’s did, but it feels wrong, so wrong, because she isn’t Cosima, Cosima is gone and she’ll never come back to her, and there is nothing that can change that, not even an army of genetic identicals. Especially not an army of genetic identicals.

_fin._


End file.
